Well, I put together my new rig about a week ago, and it's been giving me problems from day 1. Here are my computer specs:
DFI Lanparty SLI-DR
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego
Western Digital 36.7gb Raptor (SATA)
BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC
1gb (2x512) OCZ PC-3200 ValueVX
OCZ 520w PowerStream
1x DVD Burner
1x CD Burner
1x Floppy Drive
3x Vantec Tornados
Windows XP Professional with SP2
When I first put my rig together, I tried installing Windows XP Professional with SP1a. The installation kept crapping out (went to a blue screen with a PFM_LIST_CORRUPT message). Someone told me to bump up the voltage to my RAM because I was running default BIOS settings. I bumped the voltage up from 2.6 to 2.8 and I was finally able to get Windows XP Professional with SP1a installed. Then, I remembered that I had downloaded Windows XP Professional with SP2 from my school's ftp server, so I decided to do a clean install of that because I was told that SP2 had a lot of security features which would be worthwhile to have. When I tried to install the OS this time around, it crapped out again with that same message, eventhough my RAM was up to 2.8. I tried the installation a couple of times, and it finally finished on the third try. A few days passed and all was well. All of a sudden (as of yesterday), my computer has been acting like complete shit, though I haven't changed a thing about it.
Following will be the first major problem that I'm having. Basically, because my rig has three Vantec Tornados in it, it is loud as hell, so I shut it down every night. The problem is, the computer acts like crap the next day when I first turn it on. I go to hit the power switch on the PSU and then I hit the power switch on my case. The PC powers on but locks before posting. When this happens, I can't ctrl-alt-del to restart and I can't turn it off with the case power switch. When I hit the reset switch on the case, it restarts and locks up again. What I can do is hit the power switch on the PSU. When I do this, the PC shuts off (obviously). Then, I turn the PSU switch back on and hit the power switch on the case and the PC loads up fine. I'm completely stumped as to why this could be happening. First, I thought that I may have connected something incorrectly, but I don't really think that that's the problem. I've built a PC before, so it's not like I didn't know what I was doing. Also, like previously mentioned, this problem only started happeneing yesterday; the PC turned on and off without a problem two days ago. Do you guys have any clue as to what the problem could be?
My next problem deals with the PC locking up on me in Windows after I've been using it for a while. Because this is still a very new PC, I haven't really done much to/with it. It's running with the included BIOS with all default settings other than the RAM voltage (which is now at 2.9). Also, I'm using the drivers from the CDs included with the hardware. All I've really used this PC for has been surfing the web, playing TFC (a Half-Life mod via Steam), and using Microsoft Office to do homework. I can play TFC for a long time without lockups, but as soon as I close out TFC and get to Windows, the system locks up on me (literally within minutes of closing TFC). So, I hit the reset switch on the case to reboot, but when I do, the computer acts very slow. Windows takes about 1-2 minutes to load and the applications are all very slow. I basically have to restart a couple of times for it to act normally. This "slowdown" doesn't happen efter every lockup, however. My initial thinking was that maybe the computer was overheating. However, both BIOS and SmartGuardian (monitoring software provided with my motherboard) show that the CPU is around 30c. Also, though Half-Life is no real stresser, I would still expect the lockups to happen while gaming, not when I quit. Any clues as to what could be causing this problem?
Well, I want to apologize for the book that I just wrote, but I spent a lot of money on this rig and I'm really worried that something could be wrong here. Please, if anyone can think of anything, please let me know. Thanks in advance for any help.
DFI Lanparty SLI-DR
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego
Western Digital 36.7gb Raptor (SATA)
BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC
1gb (2x512) OCZ PC-3200 ValueVX
OCZ 520w PowerStream
1x DVD Burner
1x CD Burner
1x Floppy Drive
3x Vantec Tornados
Windows XP Professional with SP2
When I first put my rig together, I tried installing Windows XP Professional with SP1a. The installation kept crapping out (went to a blue screen with a PFM_LIST_CORRUPT message). Someone told me to bump up the voltage to my RAM because I was running default BIOS settings. I bumped the voltage up from 2.6 to 2.8 and I was finally able to get Windows XP Professional with SP1a installed. Then, I remembered that I had downloaded Windows XP Professional with SP2 from my school's ftp server, so I decided to do a clean install of that because I was told that SP2 had a lot of security features which would be worthwhile to have. When I tried to install the OS this time around, it crapped out again with that same message, eventhough my RAM was up to 2.8. I tried the installation a couple of times, and it finally finished on the third try. A few days passed and all was well. All of a sudden (as of yesterday), my computer has been acting like complete shit, though I haven't changed a thing about it.
Following will be the first major problem that I'm having. Basically, because my rig has three Vantec Tornados in it, it is loud as hell, so I shut it down every night. The problem is, the computer acts like crap the next day when I first turn it on. I go to hit the power switch on the PSU and then I hit the power switch on my case. The PC powers on but locks before posting. When this happens, I can't ctrl-alt-del to restart and I can't turn it off with the case power switch. When I hit the reset switch on the case, it restarts and locks up again. What I can do is hit the power switch on the PSU. When I do this, the PC shuts off (obviously). Then, I turn the PSU switch back on and hit the power switch on the case and the PC loads up fine. I'm completely stumped as to why this could be happening. First, I thought that I may have connected something incorrectly, but I don't really think that that's the problem. I've built a PC before, so it's not like I didn't know what I was doing. Also, like previously mentioned, this problem only started happeneing yesterday; the PC turned on and off without a problem two days ago. Do you guys have any clue as to what the problem could be?
My next problem deals with the PC locking up on me in Windows after I've been using it for a while. Because this is still a very new PC, I haven't really done much to/with it. It's running with the included BIOS with all default settings other than the RAM voltage (which is now at 2.9). Also, I'm using the drivers from the CDs included with the hardware. All I've really used this PC for has been surfing the web, playing TFC (a Half-Life mod via Steam), and using Microsoft Office to do homework. I can play TFC for a long time without lockups, but as soon as I close out TFC and get to Windows, the system locks up on me (literally within minutes of closing TFC). So, I hit the reset switch on the case to reboot, but when I do, the computer acts very slow. Windows takes about 1-2 minutes to load and the applications are all very slow. I basically have to restart a couple of times for it to act normally. This "slowdown" doesn't happen efter every lockup, however. My initial thinking was that maybe the computer was overheating. However, both BIOS and SmartGuardian (monitoring software provided with my motherboard) show that the CPU is around 30c. Also, though Half-Life is no real stresser, I would still expect the lockups to happen while gaming, not when I quit. Any clues as to what could be causing this problem?
Well, I want to apologize for the book that I just wrote, but I spent a lot of money on this rig and I'm really worried that something could be wrong here. Please, if anyone can think of anything, please let me know. Thanks in advance for any help.
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